Writing Fiction - and not Travelogues

[powerpuffpunk]

Eliza Wyatt, in her blog Tales of a Fantasy Scribbler, brought-up an incredibly worthwhile concern to science-fiction or fantasy writers - or, well, of any sort honestly - inherent to the nature of questing and epics: traveling-in-writing. More than anything I have considered J.R.R. Tolkien an historian - or in the same vein: he is a linguist and a scholar, and in his dreaming-up of Middle-Earth his story was given breath through detail; languages and landscapes and a wealth of appendices made the series bigger than the story, real-ish. This is the feather-in-the-cap that C.S. Lewis lacks, although I think Lewis the better writer. Tolkien’s application to detail made, personally, many of the passages from The Hobbit through The Return of the King insufferable, or as Miss Wyatt says, “Tolkien could take three pages just to describe the wind.” [Read More]

This time, I consider just how to deal with traveling in writing - especially concerning Quests. Check it out and comment!